Sweet & Sour Chicken

This is a cheap go-to meal that is often made at our place. While the prep time normally does take at least 30 minutes, the fact that the entire meal is normally under $10 makes it worth it!

Sauce:
2T ketchup
2T Vinegar
2T Low Sodium soy sauce
2T fresh grated ginger root
Juice from can of pineapple
Pepper

1. Mix sauce ingredients together
2. Throw some olive oil on a skillet and brown the chopped chicken breast
3. Remove chicken, cook peppers until tender-crisp
4. Add chicken, pineapple, and sauce mixture to peppers on skillet
5. Simmer until chicken is cooked fully and sauce is thickened
6. Serve over rice or quinoa

Serves 6.

Chop a red pepper. I had both kinds, so I did half red and half yellow. Yummers. 

The cheapest boneless, skinless chicken I've found around here sells for $1.79/lb. But this is a pretty good deal, too. If I have some extra $ in the food budget, I try to get organic. 

Chop up your chicken. 

Drain your pineapple into a separate bowl. When it's on sale, I love to use fresh pineapple. So yummy!

Brown your chicken. 

Remove chicken, and add peppers until they're tender/crisp. Add in the chicken again and pour your yummy mixture over it all. Cook for about 5 minutes until the sauce thickens. 

The original recipe called for rice, but I had some quinoa on hand that I was able to use. In moderation, it's a healthy alternative to brown rice. 

The final, yummy product! 

After entering the ingredients into myfitnesspal.com to track my calories, I thought I'd share the data for this meal:
Per serving:
Calories: 332
Carbs: 31g
Fat: 9g
Protein 38g

So I've Lost Some Weight

This cool little gizmo will automatically update itself every time I update my account on myfitnesspal.com Here's my current weight loss!!!

Looks Can Be Deceiving

My goal this week is to count calories every day. Every. I've been falling away from the habit, and just relying on estimating. I guess I just had too much confidence in myself, which is obvious from today's mistake. Read on....

Here's a question of the day: 

Which of the following has the most calories? 

A. One cranberry-orange club sandwich

or...

B. Three McDonald's cheeseburgers

Yes, you probably saw it coming. The correct answer is A. Dumb. So annoyed.

To my surprise, today at work we were catered in really yummy sandwiches from a local sandwich shop. Yes! Free lunch, and it's semi-healthy, too! 

...Or so I thought.

As I went in to my online calorie tracker, I was absolutely horrified. One sandwich. Actually, I only ate about three quarters, but one club sandwich had 976 calories. 976 calories!!!!! Three McDonald's cheeseburgers don't even have that many calories combined!

Ok, so I'm not advocating that the burgers are more worth it than the sandwich, but I guess this scenario made me learn the lesson (once again) the hard way. Just because I think something sounds or looks healthy, doesn't always mean that's the case. Sounds elementary, but this incident was one I really wasn't planning on, and I guess I'll try my best to learn the lesson for once and all.

That being said, my calories are all used up for today. So excited to eat celery for dinner.



nutritional info provided from: http://www.mcalistersdeli.com/nutrition/

Changes

I was talking to my trainer yesterday about how  from just 6 weeks ago my mindset is different than what it is now. Six weeks ago I still had a good idea of what healthy food was, or so I thought. I probably would've gone to Chipotle and ordered a burrito bowl and thought I was doing well. Six weeks ago, if I was playing a game of volleyball and two games of Frisbee golf, I was doing good on exercising for the week. Six weeks ago, I was still making 'healthy' spaghetti, because I used whole wheat pasta.

Now, six weeks later, I'm thankful to see how both my mindset and body has changed. Sure, I still have a long way to go, and many changes to be made, but all in all, I see a steady incline of progress.

Last night I ordered a simple turkey sandwich on white bread from Jimmy Johns and added spinach, tomato, avocado, and some goat cheese when I got home. Sounds ok, right? Hm. Before, I probably downed that sandwich and would've been ready for more food to follow. But last night, after finishing the entire sandwich, I felt really bloated and it almost stopped me from going out on an evening jog.

I've Lydia's been pushing my body to go farther than I would ever have pushed myself before during my workouts. That being said, this whole week, whether I work out at the gym or not, I've been going outside for some cardio work as well. Normally I'd think that just one work out a day is sufficient, and that my body couldn't physically handle more. While I do think that one work out per day is great, it's encouraging to know that at this time, my can still handle more and it's helping me to see results.

Progress is encouraging.

Inspired

Just got back from a wonderful 45 minute jog/walk at a local State Park. I've been dreading taking another jog, as the last one really wore me out. I can actually say that this one really did feel great! I surprised myself with how long I was able to jog before walking- 7 minutes! (I know, I know, I have a long way to go) BUT. This is a huge accomplishment for me, since last year at this time I could hardly finish a 2:1 jog/walk ratio 5 times.

This definitely makes me think.... maybe another 5K? Hm. I'll do some research. 

I have a few goals for this week, as I'm really going to try to make it my best week yet. 

1. Lose 3 lbs!!! 

2. Do cardio 5 times during this week (outside of the training at NFPT)

3. Post progress pictures. I'm not really looking forward to this goal, but I think it will encourage me even more to keep up the shredding. 

Lastly, here's an inspirational gal that I've been watching on this season of The Biggest Loser. She's eliminated now, but her starting weight was 264, and is now 190!

picture credit: 

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20579192,00.html

Refocus and Refuel

A hard week at work. A week packed with extra meetings and plans. A week where I didn't ever really feel like working out. I normally felt exhausted after work and didn't want to spend one minute at NFPT, not to mention sacrificing more time that could be filled accomplishing other things.

But.

After each workout, I felt great. Really. I felt like I was ready to go on another run. I felt energized again. I felt like I should go on another run outside. Isn't that interesting how that works? I'm sure there's some techinical or scientific explanation as to why our bodies respond like that, but for now, I'm just happy to feel the way I do. Here's a little explanation of my week:

Monday: workout 1 on week 5.
-Was dreading working out (remember? Easter carbs...?) but ended up having a great workout at NFPT, with my awesome trainer Lydia helping my mindset to change from discouraged to encouraged.
-Did some cardio- played a up tempo game of Volleyball.
-Was encouraged when I got home...my husband gave me a much needed pep-talk as well. 

Tuesday Only had time for a little walk.
-Stepped on the scale. Total of 11 lb loss since 4.5 weeks ago!!
-Went to a friend's house that I hadn't seen for a while. She didn't know that I was pursuing weight loss/ strength training/ nutrition improvement, but told me the first thing she noticed when I got out of the car was that I was losing weight. Super encouraging. Was smiling from ear to ear.

Wednesday: workout 2 on week 5
-Bright and early, morning-breath workout. 5:45 alarm was rough, but felt great walking into work at 8, with a mindset that I was ready to face the day. 
-Told Lydia about my friend's encouraging words. Awesome.

Thursday: rest day. Still felt exhausted.

Friday: work out 3 week 5
-Again, didn't feel like coming in to NFPT to work. Got there and was instantly encouraged by Lyd. She put me right to work and gave me a gut-wrenching workout.
-Note to self: I probably need to be drinking even more water. I was pretty shaky and light headed at my workout.
-Found myself in a sweet, personal conversation with Lyd. It's nice to have someone that actually cares.
-Saw a friend on the way out of NFPT who also commented on my weight loss. Good vibes.

This weekend I have a get together with some friends, of which I'm nervous. Nervous that I'll give in and eat the processed foods. I'm purposefully bringing veggies, and I'm also going to try to tell some friends to help with accountability.

Small goal: Do some cardio on Saturday and Sunday this weekend, despite my busy week.

Ta ta for now. 

No Excuses

Excuses are easy.

Let's just get right down to it... trying to eat healthy during any holiday is tough. This weekend I went up to Chicago to visit family to celebrate the ressurection that happened so many thousands of years ago. While it was easy to focus on that great miracle, it was difficult to focus on my nutrition. Many people were breaking their fasts as lent was coming to a close, so naturally, we had lots and lots of carbs available Sunday morning. I held back on some temptations, but let's just say there was a least three carb-a-licious servings on my plate.

Ug. And of course, I felt suuuuper bloated, as well as very hungry (the particular meal earlier mentioned was a brunch) later last night, even though I had maxed out my caloric intake for the day sometime before 6pm.
We all learn from our mistakes, and I feel like I'm getting to the point of realization that it's just not worth it anymore.

Note to self.

Too good to be true?

I've been seeing a lot of improvement since I started trying to lose weight again. I know I shouldn't be suprised- I mean, really, most poeple who improve their eating habits and are exercising five to six times each week should be seeing results in some way. I guess I just didn't think mine would come so quickly. My scale at home tells me I've lost 9 lbs so far in just four weeks of this journey- an average of 2.25 lbs per week! Of course, I'm overjoyed and would love it if this rate continues over the next 38 weeks so that I could be down to 19% body fat in just 10 months. Hm... sounds too good to be possible. Then again, so does 9 lbs in four weeks.